


waterproof

by tooruluvr



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Kageyama Tobio is Bad at Feelings, M/M, Pining, Post-Break Up, Post-Time Skip, but hey at least he's good at makeup, generous mentions of the colour blue, kunimi is petty and yearning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:35:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24926260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tooruluvr/pseuds/tooruluvr
Summary: His eyes hold both the gentle and the intense blues, a mesmerising contrast Akira spent countless mornings admiring. He knows them washed out, he knows them vibrant. He knows every shade and hue of Kageyama there is to exist.When your ex-lover shows up at your doorstep asking you to do his makeup for a date, there isn't much room left for refusal, is there?
Relationships: Kageyama Tobio/Kunimi Akira
Comments: 46
Kudos: 129





	waterproof

**Author's Note:**

> i did not think i would be writing kunikage so soon. how did i get here.
> 
> this fic now has art!! first, from the wonderful [soph](https://twitter.com/baconsoph), who drew this [lovely piece](https://twitter.com/baconsoph/status/1277048506776199168?s=20)!  
> second, from the amazing [lina](https://twitter.com/kodzuhina) who drew this [gorgeous artwork](https://twitter.com/kodzuhina/status/1302606716463267841?s=20)!!  
> you're both lovely, thank you so so much!! these pieces made me really happy!!
> 
> there's also a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1GLdW6Z2lhfrTEOdwfdj8z?si=xLzvHKimTjO-aKJjp5f3Bw) for this fic! <3

“Are you done yet?”

“Am I _done_ —Kageyama, I barely started.”

With a resigned sigh, Kageyama sinks back in his chair. Akira can’t decide whether he wants to slap that pout off his face or kiss it — and then immediately feels angry at himself for even considering the latter.

“You’re the one who asked me, you know,” Akira reminds him, and moves to pick up the eyeshadow pencil again. “After weeks of no contact.”

Akira will never forget the moment he opened his apartment door and saw the boy that had haunted him all his life standing before him. He had a tense air about him, more reminiscent of how he’d been in his teenage years than how he carries himself now — Kageyama Tobio simply didn’t get nervous anymore.

Or, Akira had thought.

“...To—” Akira stopped himself. He wasn’t _that_ to him anymore — the phase had died months ago, and with it the whisper of his name on his tongue. Long gone was the shadow that had accompanied his own when he would get dressed in the morning. Long gone were the knuckles that would brush his cheekbones simply out of habit.

Long gone was _Tobio_.

“Kageyama,” Akira corrected, and hoped his stutter slipped by unnoticed. “Been a while.” His eyes drifted to the close-fitting button up Kageyama was wearing, his muscles well-defined beneath the fabric. It was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen him wear, though in Kageyama’s defense, most of the things they’d done together didn’t require clothing.

“Kunimi,” Kageyama said, his voice much too quiet, much too distant. Silence. And then, again: “Kunimi.”

Akira took in the way his gaze flitted to everything but him, tried to convince himself it didn’t hurt as much as it really did. 

“Just spit it out,” he said. “I’m not standing here all day.”

_(But you would, if he asked, and this terrifies you.)_

After a stretch of silence and Akira foolishly indulging himself in the fantasy that maybe, just maybe, he had come to rekindle what they once had, Kageyama opened his mouth.

“I have a date.”

He might as well have sunk a knife in Akira’s chest.

An icy hand gripped his heart and refused to let go. Was that it, then? Kageyama had come here just to rub that in his face? To make _sure_ he knew it was over like it had never happened?

“What does that have to do with me,” Akira said. It came out not as a question, but as a cold statement.

Kageyama still wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Well, I just — you’re the only one I know who can do makeup. Can you...would it be okay if you did mine?”

_Liar,_ Akira thought. _I’m not the only one who knows, I’m simply the only one you could come to._

_(And you secretly revelled in this truth.)_

Akira considered his options. He could turn him down as cruelly as his heart desired, hiss out a few choice words, slam the door in his face and never have to see him again.

Or he could continue to fall into this endless chasm, deeper and deeper until he became unrecognisable in the darkness.

“...When’s the date?” 

Akira bites the inside of his cheek at the memory, so hard he tastes blood. Still, rather impressively, his hand never wavers, moving the pencil gently over Kageyama’s eyelid. It occurs to him that Kageyama never followed up on what he had said, on _why_ he chose to cut Akira off only to come back _now,_ with a fucking _date,_ and why why _why_ is Akira not as angry as he should be?

He restrains himself from slamming the pencil on his dresser; makeup doesn’t come cheap, and he isn’t about to give Kageyama insight on just how _much_ he had complicated things for him by showing up on his doorstep tonight. 

“Hey, don’t open your eyes. It’ll smudge.”

Akira gently brushes over Kageyama’s eyelids with the pads of his thumbs, snow-white blending into the softness of his skin. How long has it been since he’s kissed them? Who _else_ will be kissing them instead?

“I thought you didn’t want it to smudge,” Kageyama mumbles.

“I’m not smudging it. I’m blending it.”

“What’s the difference?”

“God, if I’d known you’d talk this much I would’ve sent you back to your sister,” Akira pauses, then decides to ask the question he’d bitten back when Kageyama had first told him his request.

“Speaking of which...why didn’t you just ask her?”

“She’s busy,” Kageyama answers quickly. A little too quickly.

Akira reaches for his palette and a fluffy brush on his dresser, mulling over which shade to pick. “Too busy for her own brother?”

“She can’t make her customers wait for me.”

“I see.” Akira settles on a soft brown and sets his palette aside. “Keep your eyes closed.”

With every brushstroke and colour change, Akira feels himself edging further into forbidden territory. They haven’t been this close for months; the last time he had felt Kageyama’s skin against his own was inside this very apartment, just a few meters away in his bedroom. Akira may have convinced his mind that he was done with that, done with _Tobio,_ but clearly his treacherous heart begs to differ.

_Snap out of it,_ he chastises himself, and to make sure he won’t do anything foolish, says: “So tell me about your date.”

He feels Kageyama tense, and a spiteful part of Akira wants to follow it up with a taunt, but another bite to his cheek shuts it up.

“It’s nothing big...we’re just going to have dinner.”

“Dinner.” Akira scoffs, unable to help himself this time. 

Kageyama’s brow twitches, but he keeps his eyes closed. “What?” 

“It’s just, you were never a _fancy dinner_ type of person.” But it’s been months. Maybe Kageyama is a dinner person now. Or maybe he _will_ be, for this date he’s going to see. “Is your date the fancy dinner type?"

“I guess, since he agreed.”

Akira turns back to his palette, staring at the blues longer than he has to.

“...Who is it then?”

Kageyama pauses, and Akira selfishly hopes he feels guilty about this. Guilty about coming to him, guilty about asking him this favour _that Akira is under no obligation to do_ , but there he is, doing it anyway. He hopes it gnaws at him.

“It’s Hinata.”

For the first time that evening, Akira’s hand wavers. Just slightly, leaves rustled by a gentle breeze, but the name shakes him to his core.

Of course it’s him, that bright-eyed flame, capturing hearts wherever he goes. He spent three years with Kageyama; he must have grabbed ahold of his heart a long time ago. Did Akira get to touch it once, even once, throughout their time together? Had it always been Hinata’s, all those blue-stained nights and mint-scented mornings?

This is ridiculous. He shouldn’t care. Akira had _known_ what he was getting into that first night they’d stumbled into Kageyama’s apartment together. 

That was the worst of it; that he had known, then chose to do it anyway.

Akira swallows. “I figured.”

The quiet that follows is all hesitant, fleeting touches on Akira’s part; he can sense himself teetering over an edge, even considering doing something incredibly stupid in some twisted attempt to take back what is his — but, clearly, Kageyama has never belonged to him.

“How is _Hinata_ a dinner person anyway?” He says. “It’ll be a miracle if he manages to sit still in his seat for ten minutes. You should just play volleyball.”

Kageyama’s eyes flutter open, catching Akira by surprise. “We can’t play volleyball in the restaurant.”

The laugh that escapes Akira’s mouth almost aches. “I meant...in a park or something. God. Just close your eyes again.” The absence of that all-too-familiar gaze has, at this point, become a relief.

Akira blends in an ocean blue into the snow-white on Kageyama’s eyelids, then adds a darker shade in gentle strokes at the corners. Fragments of the night sky for the boy who was never his. 

Despite the erratic beating of his heart, his movements are slow, gentle, and at the same time unbearably _loud._ Akira is afraid Kageyama will hear everything he isn’t saying through the pulse in his fingertips.

“...Are you done yet?”

“Kageyama.”

“Sorry.”

Akira shakes his head, hating his fondness for this boy. “You’re unbelievable.”

“In what way?”

“Figure it out, genius.” Akira sets down his brush and looks over his work, relieved that _something_ had turned out right after all. His few friends who really knew him and the teachers who observed him always said he should put his steady hands to good use, and Akira always had a good eye for such art.

Now comes the tricky part.

“Okay, stay as still as you can now,” Akira says, picking out a liquid liner from his clutter of brushes and palettes. “And don’t open your eyes until I say you can. If this smudges, it’ll be hard to fix.”

Kageyama nods, his eyes fluttering shut and Akira has to turn away to spare his sanity. After a few deep breaths, he leans in, tucking a finger beneath Kageyama’s chin delicately and tilting his head upwards, trying to get a good angle and not self-combust at the same time.

Steadily, Akira accents the look with gentle black strokes, all too aware of Kageyama’s even breathing and warm skin. Akira feels like he’s breaking a million rules by touching him. It _burns_ — and yet he still has to pry his fingers off by the end of it.

He takes in this view of Kageyama, commits it to memory, because he will likely never get a chance like this again, probably for the best. When he gives him permission, Kageyama’s eyes flutter open, and immediately Akira knows he chose the right colours for them. His eyes hold both the gentle and the intense blues, a mesmerising contrast Akira spent countless mornings admiring. He knows them washed out, he knows them vibrant. He knows every shade and hue of Kageyama there is to exist.

And yet.

“Is it alright?” Akira asks, watching him blink owlishly at his reflection.

“It’s beautiful,” Kageyama says, and it sounds almost breathless.

Akira busies himself with tidying up, if only to give his hands something to do. From the corner of his eye, he catches Kageyama picking up a tube of lipgloss.

“Ah — want me to do that too?”

_(Are you really going to do this to yourself?)_

Kageyama shrugs, bashful. “...I don’t know. If you want.”

It makes absolutely no sense to him — it’s not like _Akira’s_ the one with the date.

He agrees anyway.

“I’ll just make your lips shine a little,” he sighs, plucking the tube from Kageyama’s fingers. “I’m sure it’ll be off by the end of the night anyway.”

His bitterness seeps in just a little, but if Kageyama notices, he says nothing. He simply lets him, once again, gently angle his face, fingers brushing his jaw, touching him but not really. 

Now that his eyes are open, Kageyama watches his every move like he’s in a trance, and it takes everything in Akira not to meet his gaze and lose himself in it. For all the eye contact he’d avoided when he first showed up, Kageyama can’t seem to look away from him now.

Akira used to like that. He used to silently bask in the fact that Kageyama saw him and only him, used to experiment with feigned disinterest just how long he could keep that blue, blue spell on himself. 

Now he’s not quite as confident.

Akira isn’t generous with the gloss, unwilling to lose the softness of Kageyama’s lips under them. Kageyama seems surprised at how quickly he finishes, but Akira turns away, unable to spare him another glance.

Too much. All of this — _too much._

“I think you’re good to go now,” he says, stealing a glance at the clock. “Don’t want to keep your date waiting, I’m sure.”

“...Right.”

Kageyama stands, but doesn’t hurry to go anywhere, instead looking intently at Akira’s hands like he’s seen some form of magic from them. Throughout all the time they spent together, he’d never really seen him do makeup before, and Akira had been more eager to do…other things. 

When he turns around, he finds Kageyama much too close. His hand hovers between them, almost like he wants to reach for him but isn’t sure how, breaking every single rule, every single boundary, and _how dare you, when I’ve swallowed it down this whole time, now you’re just_ — _?_

“Kageyama, what are you doing?”

It’s like being snapped out of a trance — Kageyama blinks at him with those _stupid stupid_ blue eyes of his, then slowly retracts his hand. It falls mournfully by his side.

“Nothing.”

Akira arches a brow, but elects to ignore it. If Kageyama won’t voice this tension between them, then he won’t, either.

“Hurry up,” he scolds, ushering him to the door. “Your _date,_ Kageyama. Do you want Hinata to get antsy and eat the whole menu before you even get there? No, right? Then get out already.”

“Wait.”

Akira swallows down the urge to scream. “Yes?”

Kageyama’s eyes fix on his when he speaks, and oh — 

_(You’re already slipping in, aren’t you?)_

“...Thank you.”

_(You’re far gone, aren’t you?)_

  
  
  
  


━━━━━━━━━━

  
  
  


He swings the front door open, toeing off his shoes at the genkan. 

He finds Miwa and Hinata in the kitchen. She’s painting his nails a dazzling golden colour, and Hinata raises his hand to show it off, but stops short upon seeing him. Miwa follows his gaze and her mouth falls open.

“Wh-What the heck, Kageyama, your _face_!” Hinata bursts out. “It’s pretty!”

“ _Kunimi-kun_ did that?” Miwa gapes, hurrying over to him and cupping his face to get a better look. “It’s gorgeous! I’m almost jealous.”

“D’you think Kunimi will do my face all pretty like that if I ask?” Hinata ponders, glancing down at his painted nails. “Maybe gold will look good on my face, too!”

Miwa looks at him closely and Tobio edges away, unwilling to meet her eyes.

“...Tobio?” she says, the excitement from her voice dispelled. “Are you okay?”

Tobio swallows thickly. “...I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? You...you _did_ tell Kunimi-kun, right? Like you said you would?”

Hinata watches the exchange between them, eyebrows knit in confusion.

“Of course he did,” he says. “Look, Kunimi did his makeup and everything. Why else would he do that if Kageyama didn’t tell him how he feels?”

Tobio steps further back from his sister, unable to stand her scrutinising gaze. And Hinata — he can’t bear looking at him, either. There’s an ache in his chest he can’t explain, and a hollow echo where his heart should be.

_No,_ he wants to say. _I didn’t tell Akira anything, because I got scared, changed my mind at the last second, decided there was too much at stake, too much to lose, and everything between us is broken beyond repair anyway. So I lied. I made up an excuse. I really just wanted him close to me again. I really just wanted him to touch me again. Is that selfish? Am I selfish?_

“Tobio, are you—?” 

Tobio turns around and dashes to the bathroom before either of them can say anything else. Hinata chases after him, pounding on the door and demanding he let him in — but Tobio can’t let him see more than he already has, can’t lay out his vulnerabilities before him like he could with Akira. Hinata can’t see in his eyes everything he wants to say like Akira can. 

Akira, Akira, Akira. The boy he ruined and was ruined by.

And even though Tobio sheds a few tears, he later finds that his makeup is still perfectly intact, because of course, Akira had used the waterproof kind — almost like he had known.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so so much to [echo](https://twitter.com/demonkittyyy) for beta-ing this fic, despite knowing absolutely nothing about haikyuu aside from my incoherent ramblings. you're the mvp!!!
> 
> i should mention that i am by no means an expert on eye makeup (or makeup in general) so my sincere apologies to all makeup artists out there. the look was inspired by [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lysuotQVwOA), if you want to know exactly how kunimi did kageyama's eyes. pretty blue shades for pretty blue boy!!
> 
> come scream at me on my [twitter](https://twitter.com/tooruluvr)!


End file.
